Why I don't like alignment in fantasy RPGs

[Crazy Jerome]

Unless I've misunderstood you, I agree with this. But I see this as a reason against alignment mechanics. If there's no problem at the table, GM-enforced alignment adds nothing to the game. If there is a problem, GM-enforced alignment adds nothing to the game. Hence, GM-enforced alignment adds nothing to the game.

I think the disagreement is in the practical nature of alignment versus "GM-enforced" alignment. As I read you in this topic, "GM-enforced" alignment is: Someone has to make that final call on alignment, eventually. That person will inevitably be the GM. If the GM has to make the call, this runs a risk of being counter to how the player sees the ethics involved. Disagreement ensues.

Whereas, I don't see alignment that way. I already said that its a jargon. Jargon is shorthand, and useful only so long as people know that it is shorthand. As soon as people forget that, it stops being useful. This is no different than, say, the stereotype of dwarves as greedy, taciturn, gruff, etc. It's useful for communicating in broad strokes, actively harmful if slavishly followed for all dwarven characterization.

Alignment is also a marker. That is, it is a canary in the coal mine. If someone gets too bent out of shape about a particular alignment question, then they've definitely forgotten that it is a shorthand, and there may be other, more serious interpersonal issues to address.

Jargon and Markers are not GM-enforced mechanics, but they do add something useful to the game--or can, anyway. Depends on the game. That's why my objection to D&D alignment (pre 4E) has been not that it existed, but that it was too tangled with things it didn't need to be tangled with.

And just to be clear, I don't object to, say, 1st ed. Paladin LG behavior restrictions tied to mechanics for the same reason you do (if I read you correctly). That is, if the character is tied to a diety in the setting such that the diety expects certain behavior, you can bet your boots that I and the player are going to work out the broad parameters of this before play starts--even if we are mostly "develop in play" in our approach. I do it in D&D. I do it in Fantasy Hero with social disadvantages. I'd do it in a homebrew with a hand-crafted and ad hoc code. No, my objection to those mechanical ties is that I and the player might be in agreement that we wanted to do something else, and the ties make that hard to do.

 

[Krensky]

The distinction is central to the DM'ing approach I'm outlining, so let me try to clarify.

By all means, although by the time we're done I hope we'll stake out where we agree (possibly the majority) and where we don't (and won't).

It's the difference between accepting a character's premise and then challenging that character vs. invalidating a character's premise, making it difficult for a player to enact their chosen premise in the first place.

See, this sounds like Forge-esk touchy-feely gobbledy gook to me. The premise is "Holy champion granted power due to his faith and devotion." If his faith and devotion isn't up to snuff, his god gets annoyed and withholds his blessing. Now hold on to your spleen, I'll come back to this with an more in depth discussion below.

Here's a good example, from my pal shilsen's long thread about his, ahem, earthy paladin, Sir Cedric.

Cedric's premise is simple: he's a paladin who frequents prostitutes. He saw this as perfectly acceptable according to the tenants of his faith . Quite a lot of his fellow churchman disagreed. And yet, his god still blessed him with cool powerz.

The gist of the thread, and possibly its title, was "Would you allow this paladin in your game?"

Did I mention this was thread was long?

Most posters agreed Cedric sounded like an excellent character --especially after shilsen added snippets of fiction fleshing him out. But many had problems with him being a paladin. They suggested alternate classes, that he start off as a fallen paladin or an aspirant fighter who might become a paladin once he changes his ways.

In other words, they suggested playing a character with a different premise. They were challenging shilsen to play the character he conceived of.

I don't remember the thread or if I commented on it, but I'd only have one question for Shilsen and his GM. What does his deity think about his patronizing prostitutes? Not the church, not the other people on the thread, the deity. Regarding the ethics and morality of it are debatable, there's more then enough argument for the act to be perfectly in line with a lawful good alignment. Again, I'll get back to this below.

My response was to Sir Cedric was: cool concept.. I'd love to run a game with him in it. My mind turned to all the possible conflict inherent in the concept, in Cedric dealing with both supernatural evils and a Church hierarchy on the verge of labeling him a heretic.

I was thinking about how to challenge shilsen using the character he conceived of. I think the distinction is extremely important.

He is an interesting character. Since he kept the paladin status, I can only assume the deity (or whatever) agreed with Shilsen's arguments. If the deity was described as only being cool with sex within marriage (and wasn't so legalistic that a contractual temporary marriage fulfills this requirement) then Cedric and his deity should have had a talk or three. Not knowing the nature of the deity it's hard to say if he should even have lost his status even if his god wasn't ok with it. If the god is more of a crusading god of righteousness, and order the god might even have sighed and scolded Cedric every fortnight as a proforma exercise as long as Cedric kept bringing the pain to his deities enemies.

I don't keep issues of world-building and campaign-running separate. That strikes me as putting form too far ahead of function. Why was the game world created in the first place?

It depends on the world. The one I'm currently using was started because I was bored and got an itch. So I sat down with my laptop and a ten hour fugue later I had the basis of the world down. Some of my friends read it, it, thought it was cool and got their creativity charged up, and asked me to run it.

If I'm writing a novel, the setting need only meet my requirements; it needs to support the kind of fiction I plan to write.

But if I'm creating a setting for the purpose of a role-playing game, then the setting needs to support the fiction(s) I'm interested in and the fiction the players want to create. The joint needs to be big enough to handle more than my story. It's a very different form of subcreation, one that, tacitly, at least, acknowledges multiple authors.

Yes, and? Those requirements infor for answer, but they don't make a world building issue a play issue or vice-versa.

Not a fan of this. For starters, the unintended consequence of this is to incentivize the playing of generic classes with less, or at least less interesting connections to the game world/game fiction because they're less vulnerable to having the DM strip them of their core abilities. That's pretty much the opposite of what I want to encourage.

You're welcome to your opinion, but in my experience you're wrong. Going to my other current game, in Golarion I have a number of people who are devout followers or will be devout followers of a deity.

I also think it's a mistake to consider a god to be just another NPC in this context. A PC who decided to double-cross a mortal patron/partner can lead to interesting play. It could be an interesting challenge. The same can't be said of a god, the kind of entity that can pop into the nearest burning bush or thundercloud and essentially do whatever they like to the character. It makes for a bad game. Because the player can't win. There's only one move available; do as the god says (or retire the character).

It depends on the metaphysics of the world. And why can't the PC double-cross a god? No different then double-crossing any other very powerful NPC. Either he's strong and clever enough to pull it off, or he plans and finds some other powerful NPC to help him out. Heck, my current game system has a whole subplot (Crisis of Faith) that covers it.

I do!

Typical.

I didn't mean to, sorry. You threw me with the "license to commit moral relativism" line... you sounded like someone adopted the "DM-as-ethics-cop" stance.

Ok, here's where I'm going to address specifics regarding alignments and play. Bear with me, I haven't used the D&D style alignment you're discussing since, um, 2005... maybe. Anyway.

The alignment line on the character sheet is a personality short-hand. It's like the labels from a Myers-Briggs test. Their convenient terms referencing broad classifications, but they're largely useless for actual work and prediction. They describe the character's morals and ethics in very simplistic terms.

Now, in the case of a Paladin, the alignment isn't really as important as the deity in determining play.

The question isn't: "Is that action consistent with you lawful good alignment?" It's: "Is that action consistent with the teachings of the great god Woo."

As I said, I've been playing Fantasy Craft for the past two years. Like I mentioned up thread Alignments are defined by the GM. The samples include the four classics (Chaos, Order, Good, Evil), the four Aristotelian elements, and a stereotypical Dwarven father god. The Alignments in the settings presented in Time of High Adventure and the Adventure Companion along with comments by the developers and general consensus by the community is that Alignments, in most cases, should be specific in nature. A specific church. A specific sect or order. A specific deity. A specific philosophy. This is largely how I've adjudicated characters of faith for years before that.

So in my Nephos game the alignments include the the various sects of the Maker, the Corrupter, and a smattering of others. In my Runelords game the Alignments are the various divine magic granting powers, the gods, the demons, the devils, the philosophies, etc.

It doesn't matter what the temporal authorities of your faith think, it matters what you and whatever the power involved think. In my Nephos game all that really matters is your faith since there aren't any deities or powers involved, it's the same power source arcane casters invoke, just a different set of subroutines and access systems. In Golarion, it's a matter of your character's opinion of his own adherence and strength of faith, which is the player's bailiwick, and the Power's which is mine.

So for all these alignment issues about whether or not a PC is good or evil or whatever enough the issue isn't my opinion of their actions, it's the power they derive their strength from. I don't remember the last time I played in a setting where the faiths were not either detailed or stereotypical enough for this to be an issue. Similarly, I've never played with (on either side of the screen) who interpreted these questions as anything more then game issues.

This is why any question about the nature and how to play or use the alignment rules is, at it's core, a world building issue since the answers to those questions are inherently tied to the nature of the world.

 

[Ariosto]

BTW, that's why so many alignment discussion degenerate so rapidly. People are fighting over semantics in order to assert that something IS good in reality, or they are staking out territory in the jargon in order to make it a prescriptive tool to get the game they want.

Bing! We have a winnah! Here's your plush platypus; display it with pride.

The alignments are whatever they are in the game -- just like the unicorns and fairies, dragons and giants, wizards and enchantresses that have 'em.

 

[pemerton]

I think the disagreement is in the practical nature of alignment versus "GM-enforced" alignment. As I read you in this topic, "GM-enforced" alignment is: Someone has to make that final call on alignment, eventually. That person will inevitably be the GM. If the GM has to make the call, this runs a risk of being counter to how the player sees the ethics involved. Disagreement ensues.

Whereas, I don't see alignment that way. I already said that its a jargon. Jargon is shorthand, and useful only so long as people know that it is shorthand. As soon as people forget that, it stops being useful. This is no different than, say, the stereotype of dwarves as greedy, taciturn, gruff, etc. It's useful for communicating in broad strokes, actively harmful if slavishly followed for all dwarven characterization.

OK, I think I follow now.

I don't like alignment too much for this purpose either - my own view is that it's not a very useful shorthand for recording moral views and personaltiy - but that's a different point from the one I made in my OP. And I can certainly cope with it being used this way - my 4e game has this sort of alignment, for example.

And just to be clear, I don't object to, say, 1st ed. Paladin LG behavior restrictions tied to mechanics for the same reason you do (if I read you correctly). That is, if the character is tied to a diety in the setting such that the diety expects certain behavior, you can bet your boots that I and the player are going to work out the broad parameters of this before play starts--even if we are mostly "develop in play" in our approach. I do it in D&D. I do it in Fantasy Hero with social disadvantages. I'd do it in a homebrew with a hand-crafted and ad hoc code. No, my objection to those mechanical ties is that I and the player might be in agreement that we wanted to do something else, and the ties make that hard to do.

This makes sense to me also. Especialy in 1st ed AD&D, where I think the code and alignment restriction really is meant to be a balancing disadvantage. But in later editions, where either it's not one (because in 2nd ed "paragon of good" is the assumed default, which a paladin should be able to leverage rather than being hindered by) or because it's not needed (in 3E paladins are hardly overpowered) then I just find it to be an unnecessary mechanical burden with the moral-disagreement time bomb built in for good measure.

Which means I think we're at least somewhat on the same page on this, even if there are some subtle points of difference.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

... I just find it to be an unnecessary mechanical burden with the moral-disagreement time bomb built in for good measure.

Which means I think we're at least somewhat on the same page on this, even if there are some subtle points of difference.

Yep, subtle differences. I don't see alignment as contributing to, constructing, causing, etc. the "moral-disagreement time bomb" (good phrase, BTW). I see it as one way to reveal the "moral-disagreement time bomb" that may or may not already be there.

There is a guy in our group for whom I have an immense amount of respect. We have a serious disagreement over a real-life, modern political issue with lots of moral and religious connections. (Doesn't matter which one, for this topic.) We've bothered to listen to each other. We still don't agree, at all, but we do respect where the other person is coming from. Now, we could drag that into the game, by analogy, very easily. We both are fairly adept at metaphorical characterization. He could play a character that took that tack in a game with alignments. As the GM, I could dick around with that character by putting him in contrived situations to make him look bad. He could dick around with those situations to make me look bad. I'm sure the other players would find this immensely entertaining. Not.

We don't go there. That's what I want, whether alignments are involved or not. The alignment time-bomb going off is lack of respect, going at least one way and possibly both. You may be able to hide that lack of respect for awhile by not using alignments, but it will still be there.

 

[shadzar]

Perhaps it is easier to understand when one agrees there is no such thing as a difference between reality and fantasy except by personal choice (or social agreement for a less fundamentalist approach).

If you disagree and instead you accept that you can understand a Sender's communicated message by deciphering it, then you accept that there are such things as patterns. And you would be in contradiction to the majority of contemporary communications theory.

Also, delusion is held as a personal identifier one creates for themselves (or is one gained through a social popularity contest). Either way, it has nothing to do with similarity to any underlying reality.

My definition of roleplaying is coming from the roleplay simulation realm. Learn and perform one's roles as best one can, in D&D's case the class played. Fictional character performance is largely irrelevant.

Did you mean to post this in the alignment thread? Cause it pretty much sums up the problems people have with alignment, where one does not understand they are not playing the character in the world today, but in a fictional world that has vast differences, and those differences you learn about through playing.

Which is a funny change to D&D, removing alignment rather than just explaining to people, in the OFFICIAL BOOKS FROM THE DESIGNERS, that alignment is based on the way the D&D world views things, not how people view things in today's world, ergo fictional like the characters being played.

You know what, I am going to copy this and my reply thus over to that thread actually.

 

[howandwhy99]

Did you mean to post this in the alignment thread? Cause it pretty much sums up the problems people have with alignment, where one does not understand they are not playing the character in the world today, but in a fictional world that has vast differences, and those differences you learn about through playing.

Which is a funny change to D&D, removing alignment rather than just explaining to people, in the OFFICIAL BOOKS FROM THE DESIGNERS, that alignment is based on the way the D&D world views things, not how people view things in today's world, ergo fictional like the characters being played.

You know what, I am going to copy this and my reply thus over to that thread actually.

If you go back to the other thread shadzar, you'll see what you are quoting of mine is a point by point response to an ongoing conversation with another poster. It wasn't referring to alignment at all, but how dice rolls affect play and referees run games when the objective isn't story telling.

EDIT:
As to alignment, I use it as a meter of alliance to the two major factions in the campaign world with a neutral stance in between. It isn't supposed to be instructions for players on how to behave in actuality. But it isn't that bad considering it is based upon order & chaos, creative and life sustaining behaviors opposed to destructive and entropic ones.

 

[Arlough]

The alignment system works in a world of black hats and white hats. But if such a simplistic world was what we desired, we would only be playing modules that never forced our characters to confront any ambiguous situations. We could just walk into a village of goblins and murder heroicly slay every last man, woman, child, and pet death deserving sack of XP, because they all had the alignment tag "evil". And as we ran a pregnant goblin housewife domestic brood mother through with a longsword we could feel moral, righteous, and unperturbed by the carnage justice we had just wreaked visited upon this village breeding ground of evil.
Hell, once you put the "evil" tag on it, any passing paladin would lose his divine favor by not engaging in the wholesale massacre cleansing of evil.
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.
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And, if that is what was what most players had wanted, then that is most likely what we would have. But, upon studying the people playing the game, it was probably found that people were more interested in playing out characters rather than roaming slaughterhouses.
And so, after many editions, alignment was dropped as a rule and instead relegated to the players deciding how they would handle it. But that is recent history, and this argument seems to center on less recent history. So...

On to the paladin/cleric issue. If a paladin/cleric is getting his/her powers directly from a deity served, then I would suggest that perhaps a list of commandments, worked out in advance of the character creation and written down in the "thou shall" and "thou shall not" (or "shant" if the god is less formal) format would give clear guidelines to the player so that if an action that would cause the paladin/cleric to lose his/her powers was committed, it would be done with clear and complete knowledge that such an action would be in violation of his faith.
Here is why.
A paladin/cleric of a deity that is directly involved with what the paladin/cleric does or does not do would have a personal enough relationship with his/her god that s/he would clearly know what would or would not be in violation of his/her god's ideals.

So here goes...
1) Would those that feel alignment should be something the DM enforces find this to be an acceptable and nuanced alternative to the alignment system?
2) Would those who think that a paladin having his powers removed accept this as a way of making the situation less arbitrary?

And now finally, putting aside the paladin/cleric with a close relationship with his/her god issue, I ask you this.
A) What is the advantage of the simplistic alignment system being enforced?
B) Has anybody here had alignment enforced, and enjoyed play because of it?
C) Would the play have been as enjoyable without it?

 

[shadzar]

If you go back to the other thread shadzar, you'll see what you are quoting of mine is a point by point response to an ongoing conversation with another poster. It wasn't referring to alignment at all, but how dice rolls affect play and referees run games when the objective isn't story telling.

EDIT:
As to alignment, I use it as a meter of alliance to the two major factions in the campaign world with a neutral stance in between. It isn't supposed to be instructions for players on how to behave in actuality. But it isn't that bad considering it is based upon order & chaos, creative and life sustaining behaviors opposed to destructive and entropic ones.

Right, but it also can be applied to alignment.

Separate reality from fantasy.

The names exist in a manner ot relate to them, not hold true to today's standards. Now that you have a general idea of the terms and what they stand for that you can understand, what do these alignments mean to the people of the fantasy world. How do THEY view these things, as opposed to how WE view them.

In a culture where women are property, then the law states they are, and rape really couldn't exist. Lets just leave that example as meaning property doesn't have choices or rights.

We don't have to agree with this extreme in the real world, but in a game, it could be easy that such exists and is deemed status quo. As such a touchy subject, personal reactions to some things and ability to separate the fantasy from reality in regards to those things that deal with alignment, is where the only real problems lie.

IF you can separate the reality, and assume the fantasy POV, then let the fantasy POV be what is used to determine the fantasy character response and reactions to all things.

Now that the example has been made, let just focus on the meaning behind using the example, and not continue using the example itself.

When you think about it, it is most funny how many people want to step outside of reality and not worry about gravity so much as to remove simulationism from the game and all these other things done to do so, yet alignment being argued over only strives to simulate reality within it.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I think 9 pages of an alignment thread before the rape references pop up is a new record.